IDACORP reports Q1 results this morning with short sellers quietly rebuilding positions heading into the print — a notable shift for a utility that had been unwinding shorts through April.
Short interest has climbed back to 8.1% of the free float as of April 28, up 5.4% on the week after touching a trough around 7.2% in mid-April. The reversal is worth watching: SI had been running higher — above 8.5% — in early-to-mid March, then pulled back sharply through the second half of March and into April before this week's fresh accumulation. The borrow market remains easy. Cost to borrow has eased considerably, now just 0.44% annualised against 0.78% in late March — borrowing this stock is nearly free. Availability is not a constraint either, with the lending pool far from stressed. The ORTEX short score of 69, near the upper end of its recent 10-day range, confirms the directional drift. Official FINRA data, settled April 15, pegged days-to-cover at 10.15 — the highest rank in the factor universe according to ORTEX's DTC percentile score — meaning it would take an unusually long time to cover the position at average daily volumes.
Options tell a genuinely different story. The put/call ratio has collapsed to 0.85, almost 1.75 standard deviations below its 20-day average of 1.58. The 52-week range spans from 0.76 to 16.39, and the current reading sits near the bullish extreme. Over the prior three weeks the ratio ran consistently above 1.7, reflecting elevated hedging demand. The sudden drop signals a rotation toward calls — options traders are leaning bullish into the print even as short interest ticks higher. The divergence between building short positions and the call-heavy options book is the defining tension in IDA's setup right now.
On the Street, the picture is broadly constructive but trimming at the margin. Morgan Stanley's David Arcaro lowered his target to $158 from $160 on April 21 while holding an Overweight — a minor reduction that reads as housekeeping rather than a change of view. Barclays raised its target to $159 from $149 earlier in the month, maintaining Overweight, while the broader analyst skew remains positive. The mean price target at $152 sits modestly above the current price of $144.25 — about 5.6% implied upside — but that gap is not wide by utility standards. UBS holds a Neutral at $142, essentially in line with price. Wells Fargo downgraded to Underweight in January with a $118 target, and that remains the clearest dissent on the register. The bull case rests on 2.6% customer growth in Idaho Power's service territory and supportive rate outcomes. Bears point to capex constraints, rate-case risk, and the sensitivity of utility financials to interest rates running above modelled assumptions. The dividend score ranks in the 95th percentile, reflecting IDACORP's long record of income delivery, though the dividend history data available for this note is from 2022 and cannot confirm recent per-share levels. Valuation is not demanding: PE is running at 22x, EV/EBITDA near 14x, and price-to-book at 1.88x — all modest against the utility peer set.
Institutional ownership is stable and concentrated in the usual large-cap passive and active managers. BlackRock holds 11.95% and Vanguard 10.82%, with both adding modestly in the latest reported quarter. W.H. Reaves — a specialist utility manager — added around 107,000 shares to reach 3.26% of outstanding shares, which is the more interesting active signal. Insider activity has been confined to routine VP-level selling around the February equity award cycle, with no C-suite disposals of note. Net insider flows over the past 90 days are marginally positive in share terms — awards offset the sales — and carry no clear directional read. The peer group has broadly moved in the same direction this week: EVRG and OGE each gained around 2%, while PNW added 0.9%, keeping IDA's +0.5% weekly gain at the softer end of the sector move.
The Q1 print, due today, is the cleanest near-term catalyst. The last earnings release in February produced a modest 1.3% one-day decline, followed by a recovery to +1.5% by day five — a pattern that fits the utility template of limited immediate volatility. Short interest running near 8% of float with a high days-to-cover and an options book tilting call-heavy into the event makes the post-earnings path through the week the key thing to monitor.
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